This module only provides a single function, parselink(), which takes the text of an L<> formatting code and parses it. It returns the anchor text for the link (if any was given), the anchor text possibly inferred from the name and section, the name or URL, the section if any, and the type of link. The type will be one of 'url', 'pod', or 'man', indicating a URL, a link to a POD page, or a link to a Unix manual page.

Parsing is implemented per perlpodspec. For backward compatibility, links where there is no section and name contains spaces, or links where the entirety of the link (except for the anchor text if given) is enclosed in double-quotes are interpreted as links to a section (L</section>).

The name may contain embedded E<> and Z<> formatting codes, and the section, anchor text, and inferred anchor text may contain any formatting codes. Any double quotes around the section are removed as part of the parsing, as is any leading or trailing whitespace.

If the text of the L<> escape is entirely enclosed in double quotes, it's interpreted as a link to a section for backwards compatibility.

No attempt is made to resolve formatting codes. This must be done after calling parselink (since E<> formatting codes can be used to escape characters that would otherwise be significant to the parser and resolving them before parsing would result in an incorrect parse of a formatting code like:

L<verticalE<verbar>barE<sol>slash>

which should be interpreted as a link to the vertical|bar/slash POD page and not as a link to the slash section of the bar POD page with an anchor text of vertical. Note that not only the anchor text will need to have formatting codes expanded, but so will the target of the link (to deal with E<> and Z<> formatting codes), and special handling of the section may be necessary depending on whether the translator wants to consider markup in sections to be significant when resolving links. See perlpodspec for more information.